s on Mars. You have to
start right off by accepting hardship and privation as your daily lot.
You have to get accustomed to living in construction camps in the
desert, with the red dust making you feel all hollow and dried up
inside. Making you feel like a drum, a shriveled pea pod, a salted fish
hung up to dry. Dust inside of you, rattling around, canal water seepage
rotting the soles of your boots.

So you wake up and you stare. The night before you'd collected driftwood
and stacked it by the fire. The driftwood has disappeared. Someone has
stolen your very precious driftwood. The Martians? Guess again.

You get up and you walk straight up to Ralph with your shoulders
squared. You say, "Ralph, why in hell did you have to steal my
driftwood?"

In your mind you say that. You say it to Dick, you say it to Harry. But
what you really say is, "Larsen was here again last night!"

You say, I put a fish on to boil and Larsen ate it. I had a nice deck of
cards, all shiny and new, and Larsen marked them up. It wasn't me
cheating. It was Larsen hoping I'd win so that he could waylay me in the
desert and get all of the money away from me.

You have a girl. There aren't too many girls in the camps with laughter
and light and fire in them. But there are a few, and if you're lucky you
take a fancy to one particular girl--her full red lips and her spun gold
hair. All of a sudden she disappears. Somebody runs off with her. It's
Larsen.

In every man there is a slumbering giant. When life roars about you on a
world that's rugged and new you've got to go on respecting the lads who
have thrown in their lot with you, even when their impulses are as harsh
as the glint of sunlight on a desert-polished tombstone.

You think of a name--Larsen. You start from scratch and you build Larsen
up until you have a clear picture of him in your mind. You build him up
until he's a great shouting, brawling, golden man like Paul Bunyon.

Even a wicked legend can seem golden on Mars. Larsen wasn't just my
slumbering giant--or Dick's, or Harry's. He was the slumbering giant in
all of us, and that's what made him so tremendous. Anything gigantic has
beauty and power and drive to it.

Alone we couldn't do anything with Larsen's gusto, so when some great
act of wickedness was done with gusto how could it be us? Here comes
Larsen! He'll shoulder all the guilt, but he won't feel guilty because
he's the first man in Eden, the child who never grew up, the